Car ownership is a gamble. Owning the perfect car can easily turn out less than perfect. Buying a crappy car can sometimes work out a lot better than expected. You really never know. What‘s the best car you've ever owned?

A lot of us have owned terrible cars. For whatever reason, the manufacturer, the dealer, a previous owner or perhaps something more evil doomed the particular vehicle you happened to buy to be truly terrible. If you haven't experienced terrible car ownership, surely you have heard the horror stories of those who have. What you don't hear or think about nearly as much are the good cars and their story. The less dramatic and profanity free stories of the cars that provided years of no fail service and put a smile on your face. That's exactly the car this week's QOTW is concerned with. We want to hear about the good ones.

You know the car. The one you didn't have to do anything to except basic maintenance. The car you bought for almost nothing that somehow provided you with a lot more than you expected. Even the car so good, so reliable, and so fun to drive that you didn't mind paying for it every month. It's the car you miss when you have problems with the car sitting in your driveway now. Perhaps it is the car sitting in your driveway now. What is the best car you've ever owned?

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The answer to this question for me is a simple one, my $650 1985 Mercedes-Benz 300D Turbo (not pictured) is the best car I've ever owned. The summer before I went to college, through a series of automotive misadventures, I ended up nearly broke and in dire need of a car to drive to school. I did the logical thing and went to a sketchy car auction, happily purchasing the oldest car there, my 300D. The car showed 318,000 miles when I bought it, and the odometer had been broken for some time. Despite this, after a set of rotors and 2 junkyard tires, I drove the car for a year and a half with almost no issues.

Unfortunately, the combination of an old diesel engine, sub freezing winters, and lack of a way to plug in the block heater in my apartment complex eventually led to selling the car. After adding quite a few miles and driving through a whole salty New England winter, I got back every cent I put into the car upon selling it. Best of all, after leaving my possession the car was repainted and retired to warm weather duty, where it remains today.